Statistically, did these Red Sox remind you of anyone?
This has been a good year for the Red Sox. Anytime you win 93 games and capture a division title, it must be considered a success, even with the final verdict still to come in the postseason. But man, what a weird year it has been statistically. Some feats and quirks:
Craig Kimbrel whiffed nearly half of the batters he faced (126 out of 254). Presumed good-field, no-hit catcher Christian Vazquez batted .290. Chris Sale struck out more hitters in a season (308) than any Red Sox pitcher other than the electrifying 1999 edition of Pedro Martinez. The lineup as a whole finished last in the American League in homers and didn’t hit a single grand slam.
And that’s just the start of it. When the regular season ends and the final statistics become official for all-time on baseball-reference.com, it’s always fun to take a glance at them and try to make connections to the past. Among the many valuable uses of the site’s Play Index is its capability of taking one player’s statistics and revealing players who have delivered similar seasons in the past.
The Sale/Martinez comparison is an obvious one. But often there are surprises, and with so many Red Sox having unusual or unexpected seasons (for better or worse), I figured it would be illuminating to discover if we’ve ever seen anything like these years before. Here are three that yielded some interesting matches.
Mookie Betts
Sure, it was a weird season for Betts. But ultimately a very good one; he finished sixth in the American League in Wins Above Replacement (6.4) for position players, trailing Jose Altuve, Aaron Judge, Andrelton Simmons, Jose Ramirez, and Mike Trout. Decent company there.
But because Betts did not match his Troutian 2016 season — his batting average fell 54 points (.318 to .264) — it felt somewhat disappointing. It’s really not, though, if you can recalibrate it to look at it like this: The Red Sox have a 24-year-old right fielder who hit 24 homers, stole 26 bases, walked a career-high 77 times, scored 101 runs, drove in 102, had an .803 OPS, and played beautiful defense. That is a franchise player.
What it is not is an easy comparison. I figured punching Betts’s stats into the Play Index would lead to a cavalcade of similar seasons — maybe one by Fred Lynn, a couple from Ellis Burks, perhaps a year or two from Reggie Smith’s excellent youth. But there wasn’t much, certainly nothing that made you say, “Aha, now that’s a perfect comp.’’
The closest was probably Rico Petrocelli’s 1970 season, when he went .261-29-103 with an .807 OPS. He was worth 4.8 WAR after being at an MVP-level 10.0 WAR in ’69.
The most similar season a non-Red Sox player submitted in terms of raw numbers was Juan Gonzalez’s age-21 season with the jacked-and-pumped 1990 Texas Rangers. The future two-time AL MVP hit .264 with an .800 OPS, 27 homers, and 102 RBIs. But he was not the threat on the bases Betts is (he scored just 78 runs), and played the outfield as if it were intermission in between at-bats, which explains why he was worth just 2.1 WAR.
Drew Pomeranz
As the lefthander’s excellent season was developing, I became fond of saying he was having a Bruce Hurst-type of season. I consider that a high compliment. In my 40 years of watching the Red Sox, Hurst was as trustworthy and fun to watch as any pitcher they ever had who wasn’t considered a lockdown No. 1 starter, not mention one who actually showed up for big games (2.29 ERA in seven postseason starts).
I’ll admit my comparison was initially aesthetic — Pomeranz’s sharp-bending curveball is reminiscent of Hurst’s hammer of an out-pitch — but I figured his final stats were pretty similar to a typical Hurst year during his 1986-88 Red Sox peak.
There was one compelling comp. Pomeranz’s final line this year (17-6, 3.32 ERA, 173⅔ innings, 174 strikeouts) looks quite a bit like Hurst’s ’86 season (13-8, 2.99 ERA, 174⅓ innings, 167 strikeouts). Pomeranz should be so stellar in the playoffs as Hurst was 31 years ago.
But what’s especially interesting is that in some ways, Pomeranz’s season rates among those from a more accomplished class of Red Sox pitchers than even Hurst. This is the full list of Red Sox pitchers who have pitched at least 170 innings, won 15 or more games, finished with an ERA below 3.50, and struck out at least a batter per inning.
Pedro Martinez, 1998-2000, ’02
Jon Lester, 2009-10.
Chris Sale, 2017.
Roger Clemens, 1988.
Drew Pomeranz, 2017.
The comparison to Hurst works. The comparison to Lester works better. Who knew? We should probably apologize to Dave Dombrowski for complaining about trading for this guy, huh?
Hanley Ramirez
Ah, yes, the permanent enigma. He can be charming and exasperating within a single at-bat. Frustrating all season long, he never really got going and finished with one more homer this year (23) than he had after the All-Star break last year (22). He was second to Betts on the team in homers, yet I’ll never understand how someone who had 553 plate appearances in the middle of the Red Sox lineup drove in just 62 runs.
And yet he is still fully capable of putting the Red Sox on his back and carrying them through a playoff series (he has a .333/.415/.544 slash-line in 16 playoff games). I have no idea what’s ahead for Ramirez. But what he just delivered has a pretty interesting comp.
Ramirez’s numbers are remarkably similar to Dwight Evans’s 1978 season. Evans, in his age-26 year, hit .247 with 24 homers, 63 RBIs, and a .784 OPS in 147 games. Of course, this performance — which came before Evans established himself as a Hall of Very Good member in his outstanding 30s — comes with an asterisk that excuses it. Evans was beaned on Aug. 29 by Mariners pitcher Mike Parrott, a pitch that cracked his batting helmet. Evans wasn’t the same after that but tried to play despite bouts of dizziness, leading to some uncharacteristic defensive lapses.
Ramirez has his bouts of dizziness, too, but they have nothing to do with a beaning. He’s either going to be awesome or all but absent during this postseason. I have no idea which to expect, and neither does anyone else.
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